Civ Add-on/Expansion Pack Ideas

Wow! So many suggestions already (diminishing the odds that my thoughts even get read - oh well).

First a suggestion for this thread - or indeed and thread related to proposed improvements: It needs consolidating into sensible categories, such as:

  • AI Improvements
  • User Interface (look and feel) changes
  • Scenario/Editor Improvements
  • Combat Changes
  • Trading Changes
  • etc.

Now a few of mine (that may already be stated).

Railroad: Change so that RR movement is not 'infinite' - make similar to roads but increase to perhaps 20 moves (make it an editable option). Units with multi-movement should not be able to get on RR, move across whole continent and the continue their movement (at no cost) - there must be some better way than that? Why not treat movement onto/off RR in similar way to crossing rivers (i.e. moving onto the RR counts as 1 MP anyway).

Reports: Improved report options (with filters) - e.g report to show all my trade agreements - options to sort by expiry date/civ/type etc. Auto option for the 'advisors' to alert when certain events happen (such as trade agreement about to expire).

Display: Mini-map should have maybe 3 levels of zoom. Should have options to show cultural territory (color coded) or cities (color-coded) or cities in disorder. Maybe a better idea is an additional zoomed map (full-screen) where you could toggle more display options (like in Sim City 3000 for those that know it) - so you could toggle resources on - show map by terrain type - show where developed (roads, irrigigation etc.).

Scenarios: Must have ability to edit/create 'in-progress' game. E.g. place cities, build improvements, create units, establish civ relationships. Event editor/Scripting - be able to trigger conditions on time basis or dependent on other events.

Civ Relationships: I'm not sure if this is already a factor in the game, but I feel strongly that relationships should be affected by the type of governments involved. For instance there should be increased 'friction' between Democracies and Communists (Cold War mentality) that goes above the day to day dealings between Civs. Likewise Democracies should have a natural tendancy to bond together (as would Communists states, or Fascist States). Most alliances in history have been forged between nations with similar fundemental beliefs.

The problem with this type of thread is determining which things are important and which things are achievable as either a patch or add-on, and which things are more appropriate to consider in Civ 4 (assuming there will be one someday).

Let me finish by campaigning strongly for things that SHOULD NOT be messed with:

  • Don't expand into Future Technologies any more than currently does
  • Don't ever add in 'Fantasy' units (except if someone wants to build their own scenarios)
  • Don't move away from turn-based (personally I would hate any RTS approach)
  • Don't increase the complexity of the game at the expense of gameplay (response time especially).


and finally, remember the old adages:

If it aint broke don't fix it!
Don't lets throw the baby out with the bathwater!
 
I think there should be unique unit graphics for each civ's units. For example, let say both the British and the Japanese have ordinary fighters. The British Fighter would look like a spitfire while the Japanese Fighter would look like a zero. Another example would be that both the Americans and the Russians have mechanized infantry. The Americans could have the Bradley while the Russians could have the BMP-1. A final example would be that the French and the Germans have infantry. The French infantry could look like French Infantry and the German infanty could look like... mwell, GERMAN Infantry! Now ALL these units would have the same specifications. 4/3/2 and what not. And the civ unique units would obviously have higher specifications. i.e. F-15 (US) would beat the Russian Fighter that looks like a MiG. Obviously there are problems like there isn't any knowledge of what a Zululand Stealth Fighter would look like or what an Iroquous Battleship looks like. Instead, they can use the "default" unit graphics in Civ 3.

Mwell this idea is what I'd do...
 
USER INERFACE
* some nice funky overlays would be nice, help track down resorces or whatnot ... could also have some culture and nationality ones to give u a look at the "culture war" going on in the background
* changes to the dimlomacy screen ... diplomacy as is per now will be very tedious for multiplayer. there needs to be more infomation. i think some sort of score for each tech representing how long it took to research, a number so u can quickly tell how many citys he has got, population count (this would tell u how much they are going to need your luxuries) ... also in multiplayer u should be able to have an open screen to the player at all times (it could be a tiny bit like msn or icq ... flash when someone makes an offer or a comment)
* naming of land features and internal borders (this feature has no actual effect on the game ... exept if im greece ... i want to name the territory my core citys are in greece ..... if i wipe out the japaneese ... i want to name there old core citys japan (actually it would be named already or even if the AI didnt do it at all) ... this would be of great benefit so it would be easy to remember where every city is .... and if fraxis wanted to do some real work, they could do better than athetics and make it a feature in the engine

COMBAT CHANGES
* sentry command .... i liked it, it worked, why is it gone?
* unit nationality ... same as workers and settlers ... u build a unit in a city full of aztecs and u will get a aztec unit
* unit loyality ... something to do with city flips and your armys defecting and defending (this would fix the culture flip problem ... im happy to lose my large army in a culture flip ... as long as my boys put up a bloody fight!!)
*special forces!! i think we need some special forces in the game.. wouldnt be able to be used offencivly against enemy units ... but aggressivly against enemy infrastructure and for intel

TRADING CHANGES
* unit trading ... as mentioned in previous post
 
Originally posted by Beammeuppy

On Privateer, what is it adding to the defensive stack? Draw a fleet way with a speed of 3?

And indeed, Privateer have little added value with their current capabilities! Might try a mod for an upgraded version .............

Anyway, thnx for your reply!
Click to expand...

when you place a privateer on the same tile as abattleship the AI will attaack the privateer. but guess which unit will defend? the BB will. but this will not be considerd an AI attacxk on you thus there`s no war! Now if you keep 2 or 3 BB on that square and constantly cycle them back to a city with a harbor the "enemy" navy will soon go down the drain. Now declare war and invade without a drawn out naval battle!

Also, if the AI has the choice to attack your ship or go for a privateer - they`ll take the latter normaly..... then, when they`re damaged - wipe them up!
 
what i really would like to have is that the game makes use of ALL the experience levels in the BIC file. according to the format you can enter as many you want with almost any hitpoints you can think of. it works find for the editor and the game but unit promotion is limited up to Elite equivalent level and leaders are generated at that very level (fixed!?).

so, just make the promotion go up the list of experience levels and generate leaders either at the very end of that list or make it an option in the editor at what point leaders can be generated.
it is already there in the format, just make the game handle it.
would love to experience with a really huge level list.

cyber
 
Something I don't find in the game. When two AI signe a trade embargo against you, you should be able to try to persuade the AI to break this agreement.

There should be some easier way to view / manage your current trade routes. Furthermore add some pop-up screen warning you that you can peacefully cancel a trade agreement
 
The Palace:

Every now and then your people are impressed with your leadership and they reward you by adding an addition to your palace and you have 4 types of styles to choose from.

I would like an overhaul.

I don't think your people should reward you by adding an addition to your palace. Instead during your turn, you should have the option to improve your palace at some cost from your treasury. I think you should be able to choose from 16 styles that represent the current civilizations.

The more you build up your palace with a certain style, the more your civ will be culturally influenced/enhanced by those cultural qualities. When you reach a certain threshold, you gain those qualities.

For example: I play as the Americans, and by default, my cultural qualities are industrious and expansionist. I will always keep these cultural attributes. Whenever I improve my palace with a style from say the Greece style, I inch closer to becoming more Greece like. When I reach a certain threshold, I obtain their cultural qualties in addition to my own. Thus culturally I'm scientific, commercial, industrious, and expansionist and I gain the benefits that go with it. You should only be able to acquire only two additional cultural qualities. In order to change cultural qualties you just replace/add improvements to your palace until you reach that threshold again.

When your culture has attributes similar to another civ, they should be more receptive to you diplomatically. The only thing I worry about here is potential game imbalance. Still we should be able to come up with something.


The Throne Room:

Bring it back. This is where your people should reward you. The throne room is awesome. I don't know the conditions that is used for calculating when your people reward you, so in addition to that, if you have a city that celebrates we love the king day for say like X turns or your people are at peace for say Y turns, you should get tithe in some fashion from your people. You should also be given the ability to sell off something from the throne room in exchange for improving your palace.


The Eye or Aerial View:

Its ugly IMHO. Get rid of it. Each city looks the same except for the Wonder you created. A better idea is to have a monument like in SMAC that is part of your palace engraved with what you created, when, where, and an optional link to a screen shot of it and the benefits it provides.


Diplomacy:

I haven't read everyone's response but I've seen some good suggestions. Anyway here's what comes to mind:

What's the reputation of the person I'm negotiating with? Some kind of bar indicator would be better than my advisors advice. Same goes with my reputation too.

Access to the civilopedia would be good. Especially since I don't have everything memorized yet.

To know what the government type of the person I'm negotiating with.

Units:

The ability to load/unload an army.
The sentry command as we had in SMAC.
Balance, balance, balance.


Terrain:

Irrigated terrain is ugly.
I'd like a farmland improvement.


Production Queue:

Time to look at how SMAC or CTP does it. I shouldn't have to fight with the program to insert, delete or change the order of something in the queue.


BookMarking:

The ability to name a region ala SMAC and the ability to bookmark the map and goto my bookmarks. I like how Black and White implements this.


Corruption:

I really don't like the current model, but at the same time it is a challenge to handle it. I just have to remember that that's probably the way firaxis saw how to fix ICS. I don't know. Anyway I have seen some really good post on how to handle it though. Here's my take.

Instead of penalizing a city with 1 good production for example, how about once you reach your optimum city limit for your current government, each additional city you add, or cities on a different continent from your capital start accruing disillusionments points with the current government. When exactly 1/3 ( or X ) number of your cities have accrued a certain threshold, they ( those cities ) declare themselves a new nation -- with the same cultural attributes as yourself of course.

At this point, you can either declare a civil war or make peace with them.

To combat the disillusionment points ( even in democracies ), each new additional city that you create, or that are on another continent, you have to bring them up to the average of your top N% + lowest M% cities in terms of production, food, commerce and number of city improvements. The closer these cities come to that average, the more points are subtracted from the disillusionment points that are accruing.

This would also require the ability to move food and production resources to other cities.

Now lets say for the sake of argument that you have 10+ cities above your optimum limit, but only one city has peaked out on the disillusionment scale. It may be more susceptible to a foreign culture provided it was close enough to one. However it will not declare itself a new nation. A new nation can only form when 1/3 or X% of your cities reach that threshold ( I wonder if that's how the Civil War got started. If only one state wanted slavery, would they have had the b**** to cede from the Union? )

There would still be corruption, but it should be more on the scale as we saw in CIV II.

Cities lost to culture flipping obviously would not be part of that 1/3 or X%.

Basically this model is about the haves and have nots. Don't give them a reason to jump ship.
 
I’m sure some of these have been mentioned but here goes.....

I think the AI is a vast improvement over civ I & II, but there is a couple of things that really bug me.

The fact that AI although gracious with me, will come straight through my territory, to get one little square of land on the other side of a continent, which is going to flip over to me anyway. And when I ask them to leave they declare war.

Also, even when you are number one in size, power culture, the AI will still requests the most ridiculous amount of techs and money for some old tech that I skipped.

Example: In a current game I cam playing, standard size, emperor. I am number one at everything. I want communism from my gracious friends the French, who are last. And they won’t trade it for less than, computers AND rocketry AND 6 of my workers, I mean come on.....

I definitely think railroads should not offer unlimited movement. Takes the strategy out of where you put your units. I just stack all my offensive units on a mountain in the middle of my territory, and when an attack in launched against me, I can stop it, no matter where it is. Not that much fun really.
 
Something that really bother me: At EACH TURN, I meet each civs to know if they got new techs. Imagine with 16 civs!

It's long and it bother others civs to bother them at each turn. I suggest a pop up telling you when someone get a tech you don't have.
 
-There should be a possibility that an island or peninsular required independence if it was seprated from the capital by water. Refer to USA and Australie and several other states. This could happen if taxes was high, much unhappiness and few national forces were present (or the capital captured). However with the current corruption system it might be a problem. This should however also be changed.

-The ability to sell or give away forces.

-Rivers from all two square mountain areas

-the stalin organ and the howitzer
 
There have been a lot posts here and I just couldn't devote enough time to read it all, so don't be mad if I mention something that has already been mentioned by others.
*More Civs
*Terrain Transformation (from desert to grassland etc.)
*Set Rally point (a combat unit produced in the city will automatically move into the chosen position)
*More music (I miss the old Civ1 music, please add some music, each Civ with his own music, when you negotiate with a leader, you hear his national theme [like in civ1])
*Speech (it could be great if leaders could talk and advisors could advise)
*Movies (I liked it in the civ1, when you discovered an advance it showed you an animation with description about this technology, a woman stood in the left side of the screen... remember? When you build a wonder, you have this screen where it shows you a short animation about the wonder, you could do the same thing to each technology you discover, and make longer movies for wonders.
*Make peace with... (allows you to force two other civilization stop fighting and declare peace on each other)
*Sentry option(like in civ1 and civ2, when you could "sleep" temporarily)
*Automatic Load/Unload (you can set a default route for the ship to sail, set a source where it takes the units from and set the destination where it unloads them.

Thanks for letting me post my suggestions, I hope they help.
 
Originally posted by Killer


when you place a privateer on the same tile as abattleship the AI will attaack the privateer. but guess which unit will defend? the BB will. but this will not be considerd an AI attacxk on you thus there`s no war! Now if you keep 2 or 3 BB on that square and constantly cycle them back to a city with a harbor the "enemy" navy will soon go down the drain. Now declare war and invade without a drawn out naval battle!

Also, if the AI has the choice to attack your ship or go for a privateer - they`ll take the latter normaly..... then, when they`re damaged - wipe them up!
Click to expand...

Didn't know that! So at least there is an application for it.
 
...some new diplomatic agreements.

1. In negotiating a peace settlement with a civ that's losing, instead of accepting their cities, which sometimes is not what you want, I would like to be able to force the other civ to devote the production capabilities of some of his cities to me, (including giving all strategic/luxury resources in the city radius). Possibly workers, military units, cash, etc, for a negotiable number of turns.

2. In some instances, I would like to be able to 'loan', or 'borrow' military units to/from other civs. Thus placing some of his units under my command, or vice versa, for a negotiable number of turns. It would be nice to be able to help out a friendly civ fighting a common enemy, without actually getting ones hands dirty in a war.

3. Semi-total surrender! When stomping another civ into the mud, accept a surrender, and 'take over' the other civ. The civ still maintains it's national identity, but is essentially your puppet. You dictate everything, much like you already do with your own country. Again, another way to fight wars by proxy. Total surrender lasts so long as the civ's peeps are happy, or until another civ takes the capital, in which case, the civ reverts to it's former state.

4. Mutual Assimilation. Under some circumstances, another civ may 'join' you, and share the benefits of wonders, tech advances, etc. Commerce would be linked, and deficit/surplus conditions are figured together. Any tech advanced by one, would be immediately available to the other.
 
A lot has been set already about corruption, there is even a special thread about it! Corruption itself is quite manageble if you know what to do and for those who don't, the thread explains it all! Why a post here?

Simple: there is a straightforward yet very tedious way of dealing with corruption that is as far as I know the only way to beat AI on Emperor / Deity level (not talking tiny conquest). Yes I am talking Mass Rush Despot here!

For this strategy to be effective you have to go in a city multiple times to finish production and I simply refuse to spend time on that. Imagine doing this for 50+ cities! Tech trading is costing enough time already! And therefore playing on emperor / deity is out of option. Since this also eliminates all other challenges I like so much I would like to see a different implementation of corruption AND facilities for Mass Rush Despot:

1) Have the effects of corruption drastically reduced the more sophisticated the government is, being near 0 for Democracy.
2) Increase penalties for anything related to warfare the more sophisticated the government is.
3) Limit facilities for whipping of citizens, examples: limit number of times allowed, set minimum city size for whip and increase by 1 each time a whip is done, reduce # of shields produced per whip. eliminate rounding effect, throw city in temp disorder after whip, make whip cost money. Idea here is that one time whips still can be done, but not on mass scale.
4) At higher difficulty levels the positive effects get less and the negative effects get stronger. I am not sure this is implemted at all in III.
5) Some other measurements might be required as well to rebalance the game once corruption is reimplemented.

IMHO will this make emperor / deity also accessable for those who do not want to spend their valuable time at micromanagement and overall make III more playable!
 
Have a new tech you just researched be the first thing that registers each turn. Here is the current process:

1. Go through each town that just produced a product and select the new production for the town.
2. New tech that offers new building/unit that you want gets registered.
3. Go through all the the towns in 1 and change production to the new building/unit.

Why not switch 1 and 2 and remove 3 all together?
 
I hope that the addon includes the Austrians. We were the most powerful empire during the Middle Ages. The Netherlands, Spain, Mexico were a part of our empire. Now, there is the Austian civilization?
 
Submarine bombards should be limited to bombarding ships with really short range cruise missiles.

Also, on an out of game note,

THE MAP EDITOR NEEDS A MINIMAP
 
Some VERY nice ideas. Not much to add, but I will try.

More future ages and units. (Time to get creative!)

MORE RESOURCES! (Moders have been adding marble and other things. I think most people would like to micro manage a little more. )

More modern great wonders! (small too!) I am starting a seperate thread on this. Don't want to get long here.

Many people talk about airbases. Why not just a military base? It costs $$ per turn, doesn't generate anything, but would come in handy! Large defense? include an airbase. just 1 culture tile. Could be considered the modern colony. A new unit of army engineers could build it.
 
I suggested this in its own thread once but here it is again with the other good ideas :)

Ford Motor Company, Small wonder.
Requires: motorized trans & oil
Effect: All roads are treated as railroads for trade & movement.
Special: stops functioning if civ loses oil

Other: Rail networks should stop functioning if the civ loses coal up until whatever advance would change from steam engines to diesel :) At that point it should be an option of oil or coal to keep them working.

The benefit is obvious for war :P If your attacking a large civ with a rail network that they could use for defense, the wise thing to do would be the start it by cutting off their oil & coal. Likewise, the ai should realize this and fortify those resource locations like any smart player would.
 
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